Independent Game Creator and Installation Designer

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Shape Arcade

Experimental Game Development

The framework of creating player, enemy, and level management classes to run a game in openFrameworks as described in the “Experimental Game Development” chapter of the ofBook by Phoenix Perry and Jane Friedhoff is the foundation on which Shape Arcade is built. By expanding upon the lessons taught in this chapter, I was able to create unique interaction, and a completely different type of game.

Two functions that I am particularly proud of are the drawing of the shapes themselves, and the method for increasing difficulty over time based on score. The game draws shapes based on a switch statement that takes the number of sides a shape is supposed to be and then creates them by connecting points along a circle. For example, an equilateral triangle is drawn by using ofBeginShape() and ofEndShape() with vertices that are of equal distance from a central point every 120 degrees. This is effective because all of the shapes in the game are of equal size, and is used for calculating collisions using the central points of the shapes instead of the entire shapes themselves.

Early versions of Shape Arcade were written with each level having clearly defined attributes. I had about seven levels written, and once the player moved to level 8, an infinite wall of shapes would fall from the top of the screen. I wanted to have a way to make an infinite number of levels that could be completed so long as the player was skillful enough to beat them. To do so I created modifier variables to both speed of falling shapes and the rate at which they appear on-screen. Once the player reaches a certain score (also a variable), the level is increased and the modifiers increment the difficulty. To create an even curve, the modifiers themselves can be modified at specific intervals, and the maximum difficulty was defined (so once the shapes are extremely fast and appear quickly, but are still catchable, the difficulty no longer increases and the game becomes a test of endurance at a high challenge level).

Iterative Development

Shape Arcade improved significantly across the entire development process, in large part because of frequent playtests with my fellow students and asking for feedback and suggestions on the way the game felt, looked, and played. The decision to build the game inside an arcade cabinet, the types of knobs used in the final cabinet, the curve at which the difficulty increases during play, and the line only contrast of the falling shapes all resulted from player feedback during the development process.

Additionally, because I would not always have access to the potentiometer controller during testing, I hid a “keyboard mode” in the game that is activated by pressing the spacebar. This allowed me to concurrently develop the aesthetic design as well as the way the game felt to play.